


Coiffure Flambe

by kayliemalinza



Category: White Collar
Genre: Gen, Haircuts, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-12
Updated: 2012-09-12
Packaged: 2017-11-14 02:19:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/510269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kayliemalinza/pseuds/kayliemalinza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alex and Neal hit a snag during a heist. Literally.</p><p>Teaser:<br/>Alex lets out her anger with a sigh and slumps against the fence. "I have a knife," she says sourly, nodding down at the dainty shadow beneath the V-neck of her shirt.</p><p>"Give me a minute and I can untangle it," Neal says. Alex's hair is just so long and pretty, even when it's snarled around the hinge of a gate like this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coiffure Flambe

Alex lets out her anger with a sigh and slumps against the fence. "I have a knife," she says sourly, nodding down at the dainty shadow beneath the V-neck of her shirt.

"Give me a minute and I can untangle it," Neal says. Alex's hair is just so long and pretty, even when it's snarled around the hinge of a gate like this.

"We don't have time," she hisses. "And it's—Caffrey, that _hurts!_ " 

"Sorry, sorry—" Neal says. He gentles his fingers, like doing a soft upstroke to paint a blade of grass.

"Cut it and let's get out of here," Alex says. She worms her hand inside his jacket and pokes him with her nails until he jumps back to protect his belly. She's probably left welts. Just add it to the black eye he got when they both went to untangle her hair at the same time and her elbow collided with his eye socket hard enough that he nearly doubled over and vomited up all his poutine. Diner food before a heist is always a bad idea.

Alex slides the knife out of her cleavage and holds it out, hilt up.

"Are you sure?" he says.

"Do you see another option?"

He doesn't.

He saws as close to the hinge as possible. Alex cracks a joke before he starts— "It's more trouble than it's worth when it's this long, anyway" —but she moans at the first cut, low and shivery.

"Sorry," he says again, and she snaps something in return, which probably made her feel better than him being nice.

He finally gets her free and Alex falls a little into him, over-correcting for the lost weight when she steps away. They look back at the gate with her hair bristling out of it like a lackluster hedgehog. 

"That's a lot of DNA evidence to leave behind," says Neal.

"I got it," says Alex, and pulls out a lighter, a cheap plastic thing that she got at a gas station on their way up. She pops the chamber free and dumps the fuel over the hinges and her hair. The whole tragic mess gleams in the moonlight.

Alex clicks the lighter back together and puts her thumb on the wheel. "This is gonna attract some attention," she warns.

They take one last look up at the estate, a crenelated silhouette against dishwater clouds.

"Thanks for not leaving me," she says, because he had the goods and he could have.

"I'd never let anything happen to you," Neal wants to say, but he can't: the gate goes up orange and they have to run, chasing their shadows down the lane.


End file.
